Posted on 02/15/2003 9:01:27 AM PST by veronica
Warnings from the Department of Homeland Security to get duct tape and plastic prompted a Connecticut man to wrap his entire house in plastic, according to a Local 6 News report.
Paul West said that he'd rather be safe than sorry.
So he bought hundreds of feet of plastic sheeting, batten boards, stapleguns, and ladders, to seal up his Winsted home.
"I just have all this energy from tension and anxiety and I don't know what to do with it," West said."Basically, I'm doing what the government says we should do. I may be doing it a little more energetically than some folks, but I'm trying to be pro-active rather than reactive."
The materials for the project cost about $250.
"My wife's not happy, but she puts up with it," West said. "My kids think it's a good thing to do."
Important point here, consider the source.
The gov't said that, BUT it wasn't preceeded by "Simon says".
No Homeland Security decoder ring for this bozo.
What direction does the prevailiing wind from NYC (or Boston I suppose) blow? He might survive, when you are nothing but radioactive dust. The very dust that won't be able to get into his house perhaps. More seriously, the idea is to have the stuff ready, and seal up a single room, not the whole house if and when. In case of a chemical attack, that would allow one to survive until the stuff disperses, in the case of a radiological (dirty bomb) , a fallout shelter would be better, but assuming one also thought to construct an air (dust) filter so as to be able to breath in the otherwise sealed up room, the sheeting and duct tape approach would have to do. In fact the pump for that filter could be made with the duct tape and sheeting, plus a cardboard box. The filters could be rolls of toilet paper with the center hole blocked off (with duct tape of course :) ) See the appendix to "Pulling Through" by Dean Ing, who got his stuff from official Civil Defense publications.
Nothing will save you if you are at ground zero of a nuke, or the point of attack of a chemical attack, but given a little warning, and assuming you aren't inside the blast radius, you can survive with only minimal preparation and supplies. Water, flashlights and batteries also required of course.
Just because something sounds silly (Duct tape for Pete's sake!) doesnt mean it is.
What a Knothead!!!!!!!!!!!
Sounds like the wife is the only one with a pert of common sense!
WINSTED
Reader Essay
Paul West
I made national news last week. My picture was in the papers, national and local. How, you ask? Did I do something notorious, in the broadest sense of that term? You may decide for yourself.
I merely covered the greater portion of my house with plastic sheeting.
Under the threat of terrorist attack, and with a cold northwest wind blowing under the eaves of my small New England farm house, it seemed, as so many consequence-filled actions do, like a good idea.
All modern houses have what is called a "vapor barrier." This is nothing more than an air-impermeable layer of plastic or fiber installed under construction, under the clapboards or siding, amd it covers the whole house, right up to the windows and doors. It is part of modern building codes and practices. Modern homes also have modern windows, which are, unlike mine, actually designed to keep out cold air. Modern windows have double panes with thermal barriers, inherent weather stripping and non-conductive layers between the exterior and interior. The vapor barrier is "flashed," or vapor and water sealed, and when the windows are closed, air, water, even sound and ultraviolet light can be kept out.
How well these methods and materials of construction would help in the event of radioactive or chemical fallout is open to debate, but all these things can be measured in terms of degrees of exposure.
My house was built in the 1800s. From outside in, in cross section, my walls consist of cedar clapboards, 3/4-pine boards, native lumber studs (actual two-by-fours) and a layer of fiberboard and plaster. Remember the old fiberboard? It was made in 4-foot by 8-foot sheets and looked like it was made of pressed horse hair. Perhaps it was. It expands and contracts in reaction to temperature and humidity, unlike modem wallboard. This causes cracks in the plaster, and cold air finds those cracks.
My windows are vintage, original to the house. Vinyl window contractors drool when they drive by. They call me all the time. They truly want to help. But modern windows are made with clear, distortion-free glass. When you look through my windows, the world appears pleasantly swirled, and this effect changes as you move through the room. It is pleasing to me to preserve this old glass. It reminds me of the window views of my youth, when I was young enough to note such things and actively wonder at them. I wouldn't change them for the world.
The government tells us we can protect ourselves in the event of a terrorist attack by picking a safe room in the house, an interior room, and sealing ourselves in with duct tape and plastic. We then wait for the threat to pass. Will this work? I don't know. I'm just some guy, not a scientist. But I grasp the concept of minimizing the exposure to the "bad stuff," whatever it may be.
One Army newsletter describes a more elaborate scheme: You wrap your house in rolled plastic (this eliminates seams,) seal yourself in your safe room, then you set up a tent and crawl inside that. You have scuba tanks in the tent, which you set to slowly release good air. This creates a "positive pressure" inside the tent and room, so any air infIltration is from the inside going out, not the opposite. This, to me, sounds like it could actually work. Again, it's all about minimizing one's exposure. Presumably, the plume of radiation or nerve gas will disperse in time, and you can come back out, perhaps to help clean up the toxic waste. It's not a nice scenario to imagine, but at least you survived the initial attack.
Knowing all this, I decided to wrap my house with plastic. It was rather simple to do. Aided by my brother-in-law, we started at one comer and went around the house, fastening the plastic sheeting with staples and funing strips. (These are thin sticks of wood which are tacked on last, to keep the wind from getting under the plastic and shredding it.)
I did not use duct tape. Duct tape doesn't stick when it's 5 degrees out.
Now that we are done, the house looks a sight, but then again, it looked bad to start with. We scraped the walls of loose paint last summer, exposing the bare wood in many places. We planned to paint in the nice fall weather, when it wasn't hot and humid. Well, the fall never came, rather an early form of winter hit us in late September, with unseasonable cold and snow. Yes, up here on this hill in Northwest Connecticut, the ground was covered with snow in October. So we didn't get a chance to paint.
The plastic wrap is actually rather pleasant to look at in the nighttime, with a soft glow from the interior lights and odd shadows created by the plants on the window sills. From the inside, of course, our view is spoiled, but the effect is rather like the Japanese rice paper walls that admit light but afford privacy. It's different, but in cabin-fever season, different is good.
Well, the press got a hold of the story, and the world came to our door and knocked. And called. We were on the front page of the Republican-American, our local paper. A satellite truck got stuck in our driveway and had to be towed out. Howard Stern talked about our house. So too the ladies on "The View." CNN mentioned us, and MSNBC came and did an interview, complete with comments from my 9-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter. She said, with her precocious way, "Well, at first it looks kinda crazy, but it's good for protection."
But is it? Ah, the big question. I do not know. I do not know that when I tried to do something, attempted some preventive measure, I created a news story. That, to me, is a little scary. What I did made sense to me, what I call "common sense."
The press people handled me somewhat in the vein of "the crackpot up in the hills," but they were generally kind and efficient. The fire marshal came by and checked our Co2 detectors, which also made good sense. Do not seal yourself in anything without one of these! (Our detectors indicate 0 parts per million Co2.)
I received calls from strangers, some with advice, many indignant at my work. My wife's family thinks I'm a little crazy. All of this I handled as best I could, knowing as I did that everybody was forming some opinion of my actions. And that is fine, their opinions don't matter much to me. My daughter's does.
At least people are thinking: about preventive action, consequences, and perhaps, degrees of sanity. All react differently to this threat, this cloud of gloom and doom hanging over our heads, and the other shoe dropping after 9/11. We are living through a very scary time.
I aim to keep on living.
Paul West lives in Winchester.
The above is from the tinfoiler himself, found in today's above mentioned newspaper. The locals I've talked to share the same sentiments as his wife, myself included.
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